@MLE_online
also back (backache) & belly (bellyache, nowadays mostly coopted as a synonym for complaining).
we have lots of very specific idioms in English that I think must often be more or less direct translations of idoms in other languages. Then there's the thing in English where refined things have French etymology & coarse things have Saxon.
I wonder if there are patterns specific to certain language families - like, say 'x in the y' might be Germanic, 'x of the y' might be Romance, etc?
A lot of the germanic idioms aren't necessarily loanwords. They're indigenous to the language. They just have germanic equivalents because they date back to before english and the other germanic languages separated.
@MLE_online tell them that it was actually developed and marketed as a remedy for aches and pains, but people realized that it made a good binding agent for pigments, and also a very poor and sometimes fatal medicine.
@MLE_online they rushed it to market to compete with the leading pain relief product, ache-rylic, which later (after all the lawsuits) became acrylic paint.
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